Bradley's first love is singing with a symphony

KINGSTON — While a worthy voice and brevity on stage are essential for a professional singer, so is patience. Just ask Leslie Ann Bradley.

The Port Perry, Ont., native, who sings with a symphony or in an opera, relocated to New York City about a year and a half ago, and she is slowly trying to ingratiate herself there.

"In my personal case, it’s taken me about a year and now I’ve got to find my way and make connections, then you do the auditions, which has happened for the last six months, and then you see the results a year later," she said.

Bradley, whose concert schedule sees her spend more time in Canada than the U.S., said it took a year and a half from when she first auditioned for the Toronto Symphony to her performance alongside them in January of this year.

"It’s a waiting game," she noted.

Bradley will again sing alongside a symphony, Kingston’s, on Sunday. She will be joined onstage by mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabo, tenor Adrian Kramer and bass Jeremy Bowes as they perform Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah.

"There’s something that’s so magical when you’re a singer and you get up on that stage and you’ve got the big, huge, living, breathing organism behind you," Bradley observed. "If you can synch yourself in with that orchestra, magic happens. It’s like they will lift you up and carry you over these amazing lines."

For her, "it’s about the closest you get to flying," she added.

Ever since she was a young girl growing up in Port Perry and singing hymns with her organ-playing grandmother, Bradley has wanted to be a singer. It wasn’t until she took formal lessons that she discovered what it was that she wanted to sing.

"And that’s where I found the classical repertoire," she recalled over the phone from her home in New York City, "and once I found that, there was no question where I wanted to go."

While she has been developing her operatic singing as well — she has performed with Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria and Opera de Quebec — Bradley’s first love is singing with a symphony.

"You’re just you, and you can bring your own interpretation, you don’t have to be anybody else," she observed. "So I think, in some ways, there’s a more straightforward approach to the symphonic repertoire."

While she spent the first eight months after her move to NYC on the road, she has now settled in to her new environs, and is often at the Metropolitan Opera House.

"I have my lessons there, so I’m getting closer," she said with a laugh, adding that it is a slow, step-by-step, brick-by-brick process.

Still, Sunday’s performance will see Bradley with a familiar face: she and Szabo were once one and the same.

"Krisztina and I were double-cast in Vancouver Opera as Donna Elvira in their Don Giovanni last year," she said. "So we’re going from singing the exact same role on opposite nights to being a real mezzo and soprano. Now we’ll get to do a duet together, so that’s exciting."

In fact, that’s one of the aspects of her job that Bradley enjoys: meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones. Szabo, for example, sang at Bradley’s wedding last summer.

Her Kingston performance will be another step toward achieving her goals.

"I’m a big believer that the voice will take you where you need to go when you’re ready," she said, "and so, in a sense, I try and just keep that perspective of it will happen when the timing is right."